Delicate Ultimatum
by BloodStainsOnMyKisses
Summary: Hermione Granger wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of how she got there. In a severe state, she can be helped by no one but her doctor, whose voice sounds just a little too familiar...
1. Chapter 1

When she first woke up in a cold white room, she couldn't see much.

At the foot of her bed, she could feel a pressure she could only imagine would be Crookshanks. That cat was always following her everywhere. It was dark outside, but there was just enough light shining off the moon for her to make out machinery only typically found in hospital rooms. She couldn't remember why she had been admitted, but it must have been horrible, judging only by how heavy her limbs felt.

Her body quivered as she tried to get up, making her feel faint and weak. Her eyes could barely focus on even a window without her head pounding. She tried getting up but her head protested. So did the nurse that she hadn't noticed standing there and checking her vitals.

"Don't move sweetheart," he'd said, "You're still sore." His voice did nothing to soothe her splitting migraine. He helped Hermione get back under the warm sheets of a bed that did not belong to her. After he'd tucked her in and rechecked her vitals, he began to leave the big but empty room.

"Why am I here?" Hermione stuttered from behind him, but was too slow in formulating her sentence, and because he hadn't heard, the nurse walked out. She decided to find out for herself.

Despite how much her body ached for her to stop moving, Hermione's curiosity kept her going. Crookshanks yowled as she shifted. Hermione stood out of bed, nearly tripping on the way, and set off her heart monitor. The now spiking heartbeat refused to calm down. She managed to observe her emergency room surroundings, and that there were no other patients around. She acknowledged the cast on her right arm, and the heavy gauze around her neck and left thigh, but couldn't do much more before there were two different nurses rushing to her bedside. Hermione realized that her heart rate still hadn't returned to normal, and the monitor must have alerted the staff.

One nurse left as quickly as she had come in, the other rushed to her side to coax her into bed. "You really shouldn't strain yourself dear. We'll be bringing in the doctor right now, you can relax."

"But what happened-"

"You were involved in a Muggle road accident, Ms. Granger," a deep voice from the end of the room caught her attention.

The doctor, tall, thin, and towering, wore black scrubs under a white coat. His hair was combed back and away from his face, but it was obvious that it wasn't his usual style of choice. He had recently returned from a surgical effort, one that had exhausted his patience. In his hand he held a small book. It was a Muggle novel she was familiar with, one that could only be enjoyed by the highly intellectual. He had been trying to get some rest before she had interrupted his time, sending him racing to the emergency room.

"I do apologize, doctor," Hermione's words dragged out as the painkillers that had been injected into her arm began to take effect. She made desperate attempts to catch a glance at the physician scrutinizing her. She couldn't. To her dismay, all she wanted was to be alone, but the nurses were allowing anything but. Talking over her words, they had already begun to inform the MD of her state. Crookshanks' meowing reflected her own discontent.

He began nodding as understanding dawned on him, and he promptly said the words "Sinus tachycardia. Get her up." to stop his nurses' bantering. Hermione crouched into a sitting position. "Can I go home?" the words that escaped were tired, almost hushed. They were also disregarded by the doctor. He pressed the back of his hand to her neck and forehead, taking note of her temperature. "She's burning up."

"Malfoy?" His voice was becoming eerily familiar to her. He ignored her and only glanced at her as he removed his hand. The gears of his thoughts that began turning were almost physically visible as this theory was stretched out and evaluated in his mind.

Healer Draco Malfoy held his stethoscope to Hermione's chest, and without warning. She flinched at its coolness but otherwise did not move as she looked at the Slytherin kid skeptically. Maybe she was hallucinating.

The medic proceeded to take notes on the clipboard he took off the foot of her bed. With his constant glances at her, Hermione guessed the news would not be pretty.

"Have you been consuming too much Muggle caffeine, Ms. Granger?"

The morphine they had injected into her was almost completely clouding her thoughts, restricting her widely known-of intelligence. "Um, what?"

"Coffee, Granger."

"Oh. Yeah," she waved almost lazily, "All... time, ever... day." Her words began to slur and her eyes started to close as she slipped into sleep. Malfoy was quick to make sure she didn't hurt herself falling down to her pillow, but otherwise left her to the nurses. The last thing he said before he left was an order for a stress test and a physical examination when she woke up in the morning.

Even though he had promised himself a night of no occupation, he found himself pondering too long on Hermione Granger, and the malady that had befallen her. Much to his disappointment, he had been correct about his hypothesis regarding her heart rate increase. The best medicine he could prescribe to her was a week or two of strict bed rest in a medicinal environment. The hospital was her best choice. Malfoy wrote up the document to be filed by morning, and returned to his book. Strangely, nothing could occupy his mind as efficiently as his old schoolmate's ailment, and it was the only thing that did until the moment he fell asleep in the doctors' lounge.

* * *

><p><strong>Hello all! <strong>

**I'm hoping that I can keep up with this story. There will be several chapters. Please review to tell me what you enjoyed and what you didn't. Constructive criticism is welcome!  
><strong>

**_I use the internet for medical research. I am in no way educated in the medicinal field__. _**

**I have no ownership over Harry Potter or its characters in any way. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling. **

**Picture also not mine x**


	2. Chapter 2

The lack of drugs is what woke her up the next afternoon. The open curtains sent in unwanted light, light more harsh on her eyes than she had ever experienced. She could remember little of what had occurred the nights before, but she was slowly becoming aware of the general idea of it:

She had met her doctor, someone who she had recognized, but couldn't currently place. She had received bad news from him, her heart had been racing irregularly, and he had questioned her caffeine habits. Together, they seemed like nothing of much sense to her, but rather only a series of random events.

Suddenly she began choking, not getting enough air into her lungs. She was forced to take long, controlled breaths under a nurrse's commands in order to get herself back to normal again.

She would have to have another conversation with this doctor.

* * *

><p>It was during this time that the doctor Hermione was thinking about was badly cursing the husband of a woman heavily pregnant with triplets because of his insolence.<p>

He'd been mercilessly awoken that morning by the head nurse violently throwing open the lounge curtains. He'd brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink and had only two bites of a small vending machine croissant before he got his first paging. He'd woken up on the wrong side of the sofa that day.

Work was never a bore. Today was no exception. Draco had checked up on his latest patient, the Muggle-born he had grown up with for seven years, and had officially diagnosed her. In addition to her contraction of sinus tachycardia, she had also contracted retrograde amnesia. It was the loss of the memories that were formed shortly before the injury or trauma. It was mildly possible that she might have troubles creating new memories now that her anterior temporal regions were damaged, which was the development of anterograde amnesia. Her heart problem would only be solved if the hospital managed to get down her fever, which was causing her irregularly fast-paced heartbeats. When he was done with her, he had to help a twelve year old wizard kick-start his kidneys, and break the news that returning to Hogwarts in that state could prove fatal because of enteropathic hemolytic-uremic-syndrome.

He would have to be responsible as well to inform Granger of the same thing with her job.

After their generation had left Hogwarts, much changed. Granger had left the wizarding world for a bore of a job in the Muggle United Nations field department. Potter was married and when he wasn't spending his days locking away guilty wizards and witches, he was playing around with his four kids and Weasley wife, who was carrying their fifth. The other Weasley, Ronald, had been locked up once in Muggle imprisonment for public indecency, but was settling in with a mundane Ministry job, and his wife, Lavender Brown. Judging by Granger's emergency contact details, Potter and Male Weasley were not in her life as regularly as they hoped or used to be. Draco himself had alienated himself from most of his friends, the only exception being Zabini, a fellow St. Mungo's Healer. He lead a life alone as a single father to his son, Scorpio, whose mother left them after many long hard years of battling cancer. He'd tried his best, but Draco had miserably failed in saving his wife's life.

He hadn't liked her much when they had first been arranged for marriage. She was a stuck-up brat used to getting her way, believing all below her were inferior. He didn't blame her; he'd been the same until the years before the battle of Hogwarts. Watching the lives of his peers collapse and dissipate around him taught him to appreciate life and all other humans, Muggle, Mudblood, Magical, or Squib. Over their long years of marriage he managed to help her believe in others and cherish lives, and no longer ridicule them for being born into lower families. It was only after they were equal in thought that they managed to conceive an heir for the Malfoy family. Their beautiful son was born four years after their marriage, and it was the happiest day of Draco's life. Draco had followed up on his ruined childhood dream of becoming a Healer. The desire had been fueled when he had discovered his father's regulations of abusing his mother. Draco himself had not been a stranger to his father's cruelty, and neither had many of the parents of the students at Hogwarts when Lucius had chosen to be under Voldemort's command. Because of the harshness he was treated with as a child, Draco had always promised himself, his child, and his wife that he would never lay a hand on his son or any other children he might have, and in all of Scorpio's three years he had never caught a single whiff of anger or malice from his father.

After the battle, many Deatheaters were found and placed in Azkaban for life, his father included. Being the only Deatheaters to get trials, Draco and his mother were found not guilty. The Weasley family, Potter, and Granger had come to their aid with several testimonies of their two's innocence and their lack of danger towards the Magical community and the Ministry. Many had still been wary of his presence in the beginning few years after the war, but after new information arose with proof that both Draco and Narcissa had been blackmailed into service on the threat of their lives, society began to loosen up around them. Granger had played a great part in setting his family free, but had then disappeared from the Magical world. Until that night.

It was five hours into that morning that he had been called on to visit Granger again. Her heart rate was spiking again, and the medication he had prescribed was doing little to sustain it. Her breathing was close to normal, but her vitals were dangerously low. The daily four doses of coffee, and more on stressful days, was taking its toll on her. She was shaking severely, and Draco was more than a hundred percent sure she was not cold.

"Her convulsions started about ten minutes ago, Healer Malfoy. She had troubles breathing this morning, and her breakfast did not settle." The nurse took him to the side to talk. "She threw up almost all of the food we gave her. The only thing she seems to be digesting is cold soup."

Draco took a weary look at his patient. She looked like she had fallen asleep again, but he suspected that she had passed out. "Have her tested for caffeine overdose. Quickly!"

* * *

><p>"Malfoy?"<p>

It was not his voice she heard in response, but instead a woman's.

"Healer Malfoy is not here, ma'am. Would you like me to call him over?"

Hermione nodded, now confirming it was Draco Malfoy who had been treating her over the day. "I would appreciate that, yes." She waited several long minutes in silence, in which she did not even bother opening her eyes. Her head pounded, and her body was numb. The last time she had tried to get up she had collapsed, so she didn't try that again. She could feel the plasters where they had taken her blood for samples. They were not giving her any more morphine, so she became achingly aware that she had at least broken one bone in that accident Malfoy had been talking about. There were stitches on her thigh. She had most definitely been in a horrible collision. She wondered if her bosses knew she was stranded in a hospital. She had made several friends in the UN who she knew were wizards. They would be able to make an excuse for her absence had they been informed.

She looked up when she heard Malfoy's voice.

"Granger," he said. "You were asking for my most glorious presence, if I was informed correctly."

"Still an arrogant ass, I see." Hermione laughed for the first time in a very long time, but it quickly faded. Her voice dropped to a whisper, and what Draco saw in her eyes was something he had not seen in a very long time: fear. It was the same look his mother got every time his father got home. "What's wrong with me?"

"You were originally brought in here because of a road accident. Your admittance here has led to us diagnosing you with sinus tachycardia, retrograde amnesia, and caffeine overdose. Those are all Muggle sicknesses, of course. You are, however, still being held in St. Mungo's because a blood test has led us to believe that you may have been poisoned by Bloodroot. We have tried the Common Antidote but I'm afraid t's not working very well to fight it off."

Hermione only nodded in response. "And the accident?"

"Occurred two nights ago on a Muggle highway between yourself and two other cars. Four died, two others injured including yourself."

"Was it my fault?"

Here Draco fell silent.

"Draco, _tell me._"

"Yes."


End file.
